15_McNulty_HouseProject
Multi-media on-site projects, architectural interventions, and documentation
Gainesville, FL, 2006
For House Project, I tracked down the owner of an abandoned house and created a residency contract with him that allowed me to interrogate the site and work in the house for a month, after which I documented the process of its deconstruction, piece by piece, by the owner’s father and salvaged some materials from it to work with in my studio.
My time in the house was a sort of meditation, in which I observed, listened, uncovered, and articulated forces at work in processes of transformation there and reflected on the systems that create the resulting material and spatial situation and signify its value.
I collected images and arranged materials, interacted with locals squatting or salvaging there, spent long periods of time sensing movements of light, air, animals, and people, writing poems, and reading theory and natural science related to dust and time. The project resulted in distilled gestures and documents that allowed me to speculate on the nature of time, traces, and memory in relation to the decaying boundaries of the house.
16_McNulty_HouseProjectMemoryOfWater
Memory of Water
2006
Architectural Intervention and archival c-prints
These photograph document one of several interventions I did in an abandoned house. I cut a hole through the upper story floor of the house underneath the drain of a bathtub. I swept accumulated dust and debris into a pile around the tub. I placed dry blue pigment inside the tub and sifted it from the drain through the ceiling onto the floor of the first story. I was interested in making gestures that would momentarily concretize my perceptions of the house as a body of thoughts and memories in the process of disappearing as the neglected house decayed.